I have just joined a website that a friend referred me to without any description of its purpose. I went to the site but had to join before I could see what it was. It took too much of my time to do this and turned out being worthless.

Every Windows app (roughly) has File, Help, and About menus. Every website should have some similar items including:

About: Who made the website, Who hosts it, Who is the main contact etc

Description: What this website is about, what you can do here, aims/goals etc

Join Login Logout Un-Join Un-Join and please don't keep emailing me

other items....?
-- goodie, Jan 18 2001

The Bobby Websites Standards http://www.cast.org/bobby/
This is what I thought of when I read this idea. It is certainly moving in the right direction I think, for laudable purposes. [Aristotle, Jan 18 2001, last modified Oct 04 2004]

actually, I had considered something like this as a get-rich-easy-without-providing-any-real-service scam. It's like this: start a committee or something that, by their own proclamation, is an authority on modern interface designs. Come up with a name, logo, and seal. Buy some real good press about being a "consumer standards protection agency" or such crap. Get in bed with some of the larger software manufacturers. Develop interface standards (based on solidly established, existing specs, of course. remember, "...not-providing-any-real-service...") and attempt to enforce them across the board for every kind of app; for every application that conforms to the standard, they get a shiny gold seal on the box (or page or whatever) to certify said conformation. The idea is that the more little gold seals and certifications, the more likely J. Random is to fork out $60 for this soft versus that other one. The get rich part is that all it would take is maybe a couple hours worth of work to verify that the interface conforms (or it could be done automagically, even) and companies pay Big Bucks for the prestige associated with interface certification.
-- absterge, Jan 18 2001


goodie: fairly baked, in the form of the LINK tags you can put in a page's HEADer. Not all of your suggestions are there but they could be. The problem is that they don't do anything if your browser doesn't support them, and the Big Two don't.

(They're originally conceived as a way of navigating large documents: there'd be <LINK>s for "next section", "previous section", "table of contents", "glossary", etc.)

absterge: but making big corps think you're legitimate is costly and/or a lot of work, isn't it?
-- wiml, Mar 14 2001


costly to start, yes. You're buying good press and buying your way in to favor with some big corps. But once you've outlaid all that cash, and presuming that somebody believes your story, your home free. Capitalism at it's best!
-- absterge, Mar 14 2001


This should be in the HTML standards. Just like the <Title> tag.

It shouldn't be a meta-tag but rather part of the standard, and there should be punishment for not using it.

Start a "We support WebInfo" campaign and within 7 years, you'll have this going.

By the way, you can make a lot of money by doing a research project on this with the EU "6th framework" research funds. Seriously!
-- pashute, Jul 21 2003



random, halfbakery